Mrs McGinty’s Dead

That James Bentley had a friend. That neither he nor Mrs McGinty had had any enemies. That Mrs McGinty had looked excited two days before her death and had bought a bottle of ink—

Poirot stopped dead…Was that a fact, a tiny fact at last?

He had asked idly, what Mrs McGinty should want with a bottle of ink, and Mrs Sweetiman had replied, quite seriously, that she supposed she wanted to write a letter.

There was significance there—a significance that had nearly escaped him because to him, as to most people, writing a letter was a common everyday occurrence.

But it was not so to Mrs McGinty. Writing a letter was to Mrs McGinty such an uncommon occurrence that she had to go out and buy a bottle of ink if she wanted to do so.

Mrs McGinty, then, hardly ever wrote letters. Mrs Sweetiman, who was the postmistress, was thoroughly cognisant of the fact. But Mrs McGinty had written a letter two days before her death. To whom had she written and why?

It might be quite unimportant. She might have written to her niece—to an absent friend. Absurd to lay such stress on a simple thing like a bottle of ink.

But it was all he had got and he was going to follow it up.

A bottle of ink…

Chapter 8 (#u0d668e7a-43ca-4acd-a0f5-133e7851156a)

I

‘A letter?’ Bessie Burch shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t get any letter from auntie. What should she write to me about?’

Poirot suggested: ‘There might have been something she wanted to tell you.’

‘Auntie wasn’t much of a one for writing. She was getting on for seventy, you know, and when she was young they didn’t get much schooling.’

‘But she could read and write?’

‘Oh, of course. Not much of a one for reading, though she liked her News of the World and her Sunday Comet. But writing came a bit difficult always. If she’d anything to let me know about, like putting us off from coming to see her, or saying she couldn’t come to us, she’d usually ring up Mr Benson, the chemist next door, and he’d send the message in. Very obliging that way, he is. You see, we’re in the area, so it only costs twopence. There’s a call-box at the post office in Broadhinny.’

Poirot nodded. He appreciated the fact that twopence was better than twopence ha’penny. He already had a picture of Mrs McGinty as the spare and saving kind. She had been, he thought, very fond of money.

He persisted gently:

‘But your aunt did write to you sometimes, I suppose?’

‘Well, there were cards at Christmas.’

‘And perhaps she had friends in other parts of England to whom she wrote?’

‘I don’t know about that. There was her sister-in-law, but she died two years ago and there was a Mrs Birdlip—but she’s dead too.’

‘So, if she wrote to someone, it would be most likely in answer to a letter she had received?’

Again Bessie Burch looked doubtful.

‘I don’t know who’d be writing to her, I’m sure…Of course,’ her face brightened, ‘there’s always the Government.’

Poirot agreed that in these days, communications from what Bessie loosely referred to as ‘the Government’ were the rule, rather than the exception.

‘And a lot of fandangle it usually is,’ said Mrs Burch. ‘Forms to fill in, and a lot of impertinent questions as shouldn’t be asked of any decent body.’

‘So Mrs McGinty might have got some Government communication that she had to answer?’

‘If she had, she’d have brought it along to Joe, so as he could help her with it. Those sort of things fussed her and she always brought them to Joe.’

‘Can you remember if there were any letters among her personal possessions?’

‘I couldn’t say rightly. I don’t remember anything. But then the police took over at first. It wasn’t for quite a while they let me pack her things and take them away.’

‘What happened to those things?’

‘That chest over there is hers—good solid mahogany, and there’s a wardrobe upstairs, and some good kitchen stuff. The rest we sold because we’d no room for them.’

‘I meant her own personal things.’ He added: ‘Such things as brushes and combs, photographs, toilet things, clothes…’

‘Oh, them. Well, tell you the truth, I packed them in a suitcase and it’s still upstairs. Didn’t rightly know what to do with them. Thought I’d take the clothes to the jumble sale at Christmas, but I forgot. Didn’t seem nice to take them to one of those nasty second-hand clothes people.’

‘I wonder—might I see the contents of that suitcase?’

‘Welcome, I’m sure. Though I don’t think you’ll find anything to help you. The police went through it all, you know.’

‘Oh I know. But, all the same—’

Mrs Burch led him briskly into a minute back bedroom, used, Poirot judged, mainly for home dress-making. She pulled out a suitcase from under the bed and said:

‘Well, here you are, and you’ll excuse me stopping, but I’ve got the stew to see to.’

Poirot gratefully excused her, and heard her thumping downstairs again. He drew the suitcase towards him and opened it.

A waft of mothballs came out to greet him.

With a feeling of pity, he lifted out the contents, so eloquent in their revelation of a woman who was dead. A rather worn long black coat. Two woollen jumpers. A coat and skirt. Stockings. No underwear (presumably Bessie Burch had taken those for her own wear). Two pairs of shoes wrapped up in newspaper. A brush and comb, worn but clean. An old dented silver-backed mirror. A photograph in a leather frame of a wedding pair dressed in the style of thirty years ago—a picture of Mrs McGinty and her husband presumably. Two picture post-cards of Margate. A china dog. A recipe torn out of a paper for making vegetable marrow jam. Another piece dealing with ‘Flying Saucers’ on a sensational note. A third clipping dealt with Mother Shipton’s prophecies. There was also a Bible and a Prayer Book.